Originally Posted by
dcstudent
Actually I see that I could get back to NYC for, in theory, 19,853 miles. But that's assuming AA matches the Great Circle Mapper. on my routing (also assuming BKK-HKG-NRT-NYC). If I just do HKG-NYC its 19,341 miles. Better, but still really close to the 20K limit. I could do Iberia BOS-MAD and lower these numbers to 19,668 or 19,156 respectively.
Ideas as to how close I can expect AA to be to these numbers?
Call them and ask. If you give them the stopover cities, they will give you the mileage. 19,668 should be close enough. If you skip Tokyo, you're well within the limit. If you add Tokyo, I would just leave via JFK, EWR, PHL or BWI.
Incidentally, I have heard a lot of good things about RJ, so you may consider going to CAI via AMM instead of MAD. The MAD-CAI segments are on crappy European "business" class seats, so I would expect one may be more interested in getting as close to CAI as possible in the longhaul. I also recall their timing being horrible. I was going the other way, but it left at like 1 or 2 in the morning, so I can only assume the flight from Madrid arrived rather late.
JL first was very nice. Can't speak for business.